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Sunday, October 19, 2014

5 Halloween Candies for People Who Hate Children

Remember that guy who used to give out whole Snickers bars or jumbo bags of Skittles or dollar bills for Halloween? That guy clearly loved children. He loved seeing the joy on their sticky faces even as they changed costumes and rang his doorbell for the third time that night. If Halloween had a Santa Claus, this guy would be it.

Adorable.

This article isn't about that guy, though somebody should write one. This article is about the house down the street. The one with the lights off and the angry dog barking on the other side of the door. The door your friend Paul insists you knock on because it's almost 9pm and there aren't any other houses left.

This article is about the sad, angry man who answers the door in a stained pair of boxer shorts with the perpetual three-day stubble and eyes blurry with booze. More importantly, this article is about the crap that guy hands out for Halloween every year.

Don't be that guy.

5. Cow Tails

Cow tails were first manufactured in 1984 by a very ambitious, misinformed candy maker who looked at a cow's ass and thought, 'You know who loves chewing on cow butt? Children.' .

I'm convinced billions of this stuff were knocked off the factory line and 30 years later we're still trying to put a dent in the left-over stock. They are sticks of caramel around a 'creamy center'. What is the cream you ask? Don't open that door. If you look into the abyss, the abyss will change you.

This is the candy that survives until Halloween the following year, but only because you're afraid of throwing it out and raising the ire of the angry god who first created it. This isn't a candy, it's an albatross. If Coleridge were alive today, he might write poems about it. He would definitely dip into his reserve opium stock just to get the taste out of his mouth.

One of these tastes like bovine bottom and the other is the rear end of a cow.

4. Candy Corn

Every time a child cries, the candy corn manufacturers produce another bag.

I have a new rule for candy makers--don't produce any sugar confectionary based on something that can be found on a farm. Then we might have also avoided the inedible concoction that is candy corn.

For some reason, this stuff is actually popular enough that it's produced in multiple flavors (indian, Christmas, and styrofoam). This isn't candy. It's wax without that sweet waxy taste we all know and love.

3. Any Hard Candy

Would you eat what's in this woman's purse?

Especially butterscotch. It tastes like butter flavored sorrow.

Hard candies are not for trick or treaters. They're for visits with grandma when you need to get the taste of kasha out of your mouth. They're for swallowing and choking on during long car trips when you find one tucked between the seat. They're for post-dentist visits when there's literally no other candy around, but you still want to give a fuck you to the hygienist who told you to floss more.

4. Good and Plenty

All the taste of cough medicine with the visual appeal of aspirin.

I'm adding anything licorice flavored to my list of banned Halloween candy. You know what else is licorice flavored? Jagermeister, or the perpetual answer to the question 'What were you drinking right before you threw up?'

2. Tootsie Rolls

It looks like something a Cow Tail might have shitted out.

Caramel is the most abused candy ingredient. Caramel apples-- delicious. Caramel on ice cream--yes, please. So why does it become a biohazard in the hands of candy manufacturers? Seriously, Tootsie rolls are disgusting. Stale tootsie rolls (and they're always stale), are indigestible. And why do the wrappers always mysteriously open up in a Halloween bag? This is a candy the creepy guy down the street could soak in arsenic and it would only improve the taste.

1. Mary Janes

First manufactured in 1914, which is also the last time they changed the design on the wrapper.

Mary Janes are the Dorian Gray of the confectionary world--outwardly, they don't appear to have aged, but open them up and their true horror is revealed.

Do you like molasses? No, because you're not an 1880's gold miner. But the makers are a century into insisting that molasses is as popular and delicious today as it was during the gold rush.